OpenAI lets businesses manage ChatGPT profiles and launch customer-facing agents

OpenAI is promising more accurate business information in ChatGPT while giving companies their own place to answer customers. Its November 10 beta launch, Businesses in ChatGPT, combines profile management and engagement insights with customer-facing agents. The boundary is explicit: a business’s agent conversation is meant to remain separate from ChatGPT’s independent answers.

Business information gets an owner

The starting point is Business Hub, where eligible businesses can claim their organization and, after verification, update its details. They can also add self-service product feeds containing pricing and availability. OpenAI presents this as a way to give ChatGPT current information when people explore products and services.

Claiming a profile has broader geographic eligibility than launching an agent. Any eligible business located where ChatGPT is available can claim its business through the hub. Existing OpenAI Enterprise customers and advertisers can instead work with their OpenAI representative to complete that process.

Shopify merchants have another route: connecting their store from Business Hub or the Shopify admin to streamline verification. That connection builds on an existing arrangement rather than introducing Shopify’s product catalog to ChatGPT for the first time. Eligible merchant products are already integrated through Shopify Catalog, OpenAI says.

A deliberate handoff to the business

Business Agents initially serve eligible ecommerce and online-service businesses in the United States. After claiming their business, eligible organizations can build, test and launch an agent that answers questions about their offerings. The initial availability is narrower than Business Hub’s profile-claiming access.

The customer journey begins with an ordinary ChatGPT response. When a business appears, a user can click through to its ChatGPT profile. If an agent is available, the customer can choose to start a conversation. OpenAI’s example is a shopper comparing two products and asking which features fit their needs, with the agent drawing on the business’s information.

OpenAI says that exchange is clearly labeled and separate from the customer’s original ChatGPT conversation. There is also a paid route into it: businesses can sponsor their Business Agent and make it the destination for ChatGPT Ads. The company says sponsored placements are labeled and kept separate from ChatGPT responses.

We don’t share users’ conversations or Business Agent chats with businesses.

OpenAI, in its Businesses in ChatGPT announcement

Businesses see patterns, not transcripts

Business Hub’s measurement tools cover mentions and website clicks, along with “discovery topics”: common themes across conversations in which the business’s website is cited. These are aggregated insights, not access to individual exchanges. OpenAI says they appear only when enough conversations or interactions meet its thresholds; the announcement does not specify those thresholds.

OpenAI’s stated purpose for the dashboard is to help businesses understand how they are represented and spot opportunities to improve the information they supply. The distinction matters to how the tool is presented: companies receive measures of engagement and recurring topics, while OpenAI says the underlying customer conversations remain private.

The beta is a starting point, not the full scope OpenAI describes. The company plans to extend Businesses in ChatGPT and Business Agents to more markets and business categories, and develop tools for organizations with more complex needs. It has not attached a timetable to those expansion plans.